Magical Almanac: Practical Magic for Everyday Living - Lauryn Heineman 2018

The Inverse Cone of Power by Jason Mankey
Fire Magic

Building the cone of power is a traditional way of raising energy for magickal purposes in many Witch covens. Cones of Power are built by casting a strong magickal circle designed to keep energy within the circle’s boundaries, and then filling up that space with magickal energy. There are a variety of techniques that can be used to create the energy necessary for building a cone of power, the most common being dancing and chanting (with those two techniques often used in tandem).

Eventually, when enough magickal energy is released, it begins to circulate around the circle, spiraling upward. If we could see magickal energy circle around us with our mundane eyes, it would resemble a cone or an upside-down funnel. When the energy inside the cone of power reaches a crescendo, it’s generally released by whoever is leading ritual and then sent out into the world to accomplish whatever goal it was raised for. I often imagine this release of energy as resembling a volcano erupting.

The first mention of the cone of power occurs in Gerald Gardner’s 1954 book Witchcraft Today. (Gardner was the first modern, public, self-identifying Witch, which makes him a rather important historical magickal figure.) In that book Gardner talks about a group of Witches in World War II Britain that “raised the great cone of power and directed the thought at Hitler’s brain: ’You can’t cross the sea.’”¹ Gardner’s Witches seem to have succeeded with their spellcraft too—Hitler never did invade the United Kingdom. Since Gardner first wrote about the cone of power, it has become a popular tool in the magick arsenal of most Witches and is generally present anytime a group of Witches gets together to raise energy.

When I’m leading the rituals of my coven, I generally raise a cone of power for our magickal workings, but not everyone in our coven operates that way. Out on a walk one evening with my wife while discussing an upcoming ritual, I brought up the cone of power and suggested we use it for an impending piece of spellcasting. My wife gave me a rather blank stare and told me that’s not how she would be leading our work and that she rarely ever raises the cone of power anymore. Instead she told me that she does just the opposite. She described this to me as her “death ray,” but after we discussed her technique, we decided that it should probably be known as the “inverse cone of power.”

So What Is the Inverse Cone of Power?

A couple of years ago my wife and I had a friend with a very aggressive form of cancer, and we performed a lot of magick for him. For several months most of our coven rituals ended with all of us attempting to send him energy, which we would then direct toward him. After thinking about the techniques we were using, my wife decided that simply blasting energy up and out of our circle like an erupting volcano seemed too imprecise. She wanted to make sure that the energy we were raising went directly to our friend and reached him as quickly as possible. This is how she came up with the inverse cone of power technique.

Instead of letting the energy of our coven spiral upward and out, my wife directed our energy downward toward our coven’s altar. Upon the altar she’d set up some specific focus items designed to channel our energy out and away specifically toward our sick friend. She envisioned our magickal force as being as sharp and focused as a laser beam, which is the reason she initially called her technique a death ray. The inverse cone of power is a lot like a traditional cone of power: energy is raised and that energy is focused and spirals around the circle, but in this instance it takes a different path out of the circle and out into the universe.

The Pentacle and the Crystal Ball

For the inverse cone of power to be effective it requires a gateway and a point of focus. Luckily, most of us already have the perfect gateway on our altars—the pentacle (sometimes called a paten). A ritual pentacle is generally a metal, wooden, paper, or clay disc with an upright pentagram drawn or inscribed upon it. Sometimes other symbols are placed around the pentagram by individual Witches, but such “extras” aren’t a requirement. (The terms pentacle and pentagram are often used as synonyms; in my own personal practice I use the term “pentacle” for the working tool and “pentagram” for the symbol of the five-pointed star.²)

The pentacle is generally used to consecrate ritual materials such as salt and water, but it has a much deeper meaning. In ceremonial magick the pentacle was used to summon spirits (and demons), and its use in early Witchcraft was similar. In Witchcraft Today Gerald Gardner writes that it was used to “command spirits,” which allowed Witches to ask “departed spirits to return or communicate” with the living.³ What this implies is that the pentacle is a gateway tool, one that can open up access to other realms and physical locations in this world. If spirits and other entities can arrive in our rituals through the pentacle, it makes sense that we should be able to send energy out and through it too!

If you don’t currently own a pentacle, they are easy enough to put together. If you have access to a blank dinner plate, you can simply paint a pentagram onto it—instant pentacle! Even easier is taking a paper plate and simply drawing a pentagram onto it. It doesn’t really matter how special or pretty our magickal tools are. As long as we create them with good intent, they’ll work just fine.

It almost sounds silly to say that my coven uses a crystal ball during ritual, but we do! For the inverse cone of power our crystal ball serves two purposes. Crystals are excellent conductors of magickal energy, so they make a powerful focal point in ritual. When using the inverse cone technique, we focus our energy into the crystal ball, which we sit on top of the pentacle. The crystal ball absorbs all the energy directed toward it, stopping any stray energies from escaping their intended purpose.

In fortune telling and popular movies crystal balls are often used as scrying devices. Energy is directed into the crystal ball, usually so the scryer can find out something about a particular person or perhaps a future outcome. In our practice we use the ball for a similar purpose: we use it to call up the person (or persons) we are doing a spell for. We use the crystal ball to lock in on their location, which helps ensure that the energy we are raising goes to the people we want it to.

Our crystal ball is not particularly big either, about the size of a vending machine “bouncy ball.” (Instead of rubbing two hands across it like fortune tellers do in the movies, I can fit it between my thumb and forefinger.) While we have a rather specialized crystal ball, any piece of crystal will do, and it doesn’t necessarily have to be sphere shaped. Buying the most expensive crystal at a gem shop is no guarantee of greater success, either. Some of the most powerful crystals in our house are rather rough looking and only cost a couple of bucks!

Using the Inverted Cone of Power:

The Ritual

My wife and I generally use the inverted cone of power during coven ritual, but I think it can also be used effectively by solitaries. Start by setting up your ritual space in the usual way—calling the quarters, invoking the Goddess and God, and so on, making sure to cast a circle designed to hold in magickal energy. Set your pentacle on the middle of your altar and place a crystal in the center of it.

To make sure the energy you’re raising reaches its intended target, you can place a picture of the person (or goal) you are working on under your crystal. If you don’t have a picture, simply writing down a name or intention upon a piece of paper will suffice. Additionally, if you have stones or herbs that you like to use that contribute to your intended purpose, you can place them on top of the pentacle, where their energy will combine with the power about to be raised.

Dancing and movement are often associated with the traditional cone of power, but won’t work here (the energy you are raising will spiral around and upward). We usually chant or tone to raise energy when using the inverted cone. The best chants are generally short and rhymed (“Better you’ll feel; we say heal!”), and if they end up being a bit goofy, that’s nothing to worry about; it’s the intent that matters.

Instead of coming up with a chant, we’ll often tone instead, which is just as effective. Toning doesn’t release power through words, instead it utilizes a vowel sound. In my coven we generally use a deep “O” sound, repeated over and over. While toning, you want your mind to focus on the task at hand. When doing healing work for a friend, you’d want to focus in your mind’s eye on that friend and visualize their condition improving and the magick you are sending them being absorbed into their body.

While much of the energy from toning and chanting leaves the body through the mouth, in our coven we also push it out of our hands. While we tone, we can literally feel the energy leaving our hands and being directed where we want it to go. As we tone, we all slowly inch closer toward the altar in the center of our ritual space, our hands gradually moving out toward the altar’s pentacle. The closer we get to one another and the altar, the more intense our toning becomes. “Intense” doesn’t necessarily imply that our toning is increasing in volume. It’s the intensity of the energy being released from our bodies that grows stronger.

Eventually we all end up shoulder to should around the altar, our hands all lifted directly above the pentacle. By this point we can feel the energy in front of us, and we literally start pushing it toward the pentacle. The energy is no hypothetical here either—we can all feel it as we push. At these moments it’s just as real and as tangible as pushing a door open.

With our fingertips now directly above the crystal sitting atop the pentacle, we can feel some of the energy beginning to flower through the pentacle toward its intended destination. Before we end the rite, our high priestess usually shouts “one,” letting us know that we are almost done and for everyone to give her (and our spell) one final push! Here our toning reaches a crescendo, and the space around us crackles with energy. Our toning then ends in unison with no prompting, and we feel the energy we’ve raised being whisked away to its intended destination.

The crystal upon the pentacle has given our magick laser-like focus, pinpointing our energy for maximum effectiveness, while our pentacle has taken that energy from our ritual space directly to where it needs to go. After my coven performed this technique for our friend with cancer, he informed me a few days later that he could literally see the energy we had sent him descending down upon him like an army of golden parachutes. The inverse cone of power may not be traditional, but it most certainly works.

1. Gardner writes this tiny little snippet about the Cone of Power in chapter 10 of Witchcraft Today. Since Today has been reprinted several dozen times, the page number will vary from edition to edition.

2. The Oxford Living Dictionary provides the word “pentagram” as a secondary definition for “pentacle,” which means that in general English usage the two words are often used as synonyms.

3. The information about the pentacle in Gardner’s work can be found at the beginning of chapter 11, “Some Other Matters.”